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When Georgia’s Republican governor signed off on Joe Biden’s win in the state, President Trump’s most loyal supporters took the move as a stab in the back. They have vowed to punish the GOP for its apparent betrayal, at any cost.

After a recount that failed to overturn Joe Biden’s 12,000-vote lead over Donald Trump, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed the paperwork on Friday that awarded the state’s 16 electoral votes to Biden. Kemp stated that he was following the law by doing so, and said that his decision “paves the way for the Trump campaign to pursue other legal options and a separate recount if they choose.”

Though a second recount begins on Tuesday, some of Trump’s most loyal supporters have already severed their ties with the Republican Party, citing a consent decree signed by Kemp and Georgia Democrats that allowed elections officials to count some absentee ballots with mismatched signatures, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s insistence that post-election signature matching is impossible.

Furthermore, these Trump loyalists blame Kemp and the Republican-controlled State Congress in Georgia for turning a blind eye to alleged voter fraud. Estranged Trump lawyer Sidney Powell even accused the GOP on Saturday of taking bribes from Dominion, a foreign-owned voting machine firm whose hardware was used in Georgia. In addition, Trump’s supporters claim that recount monitors missed scores of counting errors, that Biden’s votes in Atlanta had the statistical hallmarks of fraud, and that thousands of votes for Trump were lost after election day.

This litany of accusations – from the credible to the far-fetched – presents a problem for the Republican Party, which is now counting on the nearly 2.5 million Trump voters in Georgia to turn out in January to support Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in two hotly contested Senate runoff elections. Both are polling neck-and-neck against their Democratic rivals and, should both lose, control of the Senate would be split 50-50, with likely Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote and handing both houses of Congress to the Democrats for the first time since 2011.

The Committee For American Sovereignty, a pro-Trump super PAC active in 2016, published a website this week asking Georgians to “hack the runoff” and write in Trump’s name on ballots in January, to send a message to the GOP and “crush the liberal/socialist plot to destroy America.” 

Doing so would send a message, but would also invalidate these ballots, as Georgia’s runoff ballots do not allow space for write-in candidates. Yet for some Trump supporters, handing control of the Senate over to Democrats is preferable to rewarding a party that apparently turned its back on them.

Don’t let GOP spokesmouths blackmail you like this. The people want Trump not the GOP. If GOP fails to certify Trump win, which they have the legal authority to do, they must understand it will mean the political end of the GOP pic.twitter.com/KX0HQfnooq

If the GOP does not fight with everything they have to stop the steal and confirm Trump, I am done with the GOP.Tens of MILLIONS of Trump supporters feel the same way.They either fight for Trump or the GOP is destroyed, permanently. https://t.co/NAhO90etym

Let me get this straight: Georgia Republicans refuse to audit the vote because it might make Trump the winner but now want Republicans to vote to protect the Senate?Get bent, GOP.

The game is not winnable because even when we win, we lose. If the @GOP wants voters, they should stop fucking over the people that vote for them. The left JUST stole our votes and the right is letting them. Voting won’t change that and you can’t shame people into it.

Yet some of Trump’s most visible allies on social media have proposed doing just that. “It’s time to set aside childish fantasies,” pundit Mike Cernovich wrote on Twitter. “Georgia is the game now.” Even Trump’s son, Donald Jr., pleaded with his followers to “IGNORE” anyone threatening to withhold their votes, adding “We need ALL of our people coming out to vote for Kelly & David.”

Trump won in 2016 against impossible odds. 3 SCOTUS justices. Peace in Middle East. 74,000,000 votes. It’s a one-term highlight reel. And yes it’s time to set aside childish fantasies. SCOTUS will not change result.Georgia is the game now.

I’m seeing a lot of talk from people that are supposed to be on our side telling GOP voters not to go out & vote for @KLoeffler and @PerdueSenate. That is NONSENSE. IGNORE those people.We need ALL of our people coming out to vote for Kelly & David.#MAGA#GASEN

Whoever holds power in Georgia, and Washington, in January, the Republican party is at a crossroads. Its media spokespeople are already penning thinkpieces pondering the future of “Trumpism” without Trump himself, touting the party’s future as a “multiethnic, multiracial, working-class coalition,” or even pining for a return to a GOP that kowtows to Democrats on everything except deregulation and tax cuts.

Except to a majority of Trump’s 74 million voters, there is no Trumpism without Trump. Only three percent of these voters think that Joe Biden won fair and square, according to a new CNBC poll, while more than half say that, should Trump’s legal challenges fail and Biden be inaugurated in January, they’ll jump behind the president if he ran again in 2024. 

53 percent of Republicans told Politico that they’d back Trump again, compared to only 12 percent favoring Vice President Mike Pence and eight percent supporting Donald Trump Jr. in a hypothetical 2024 primary. Establishment Republicans Nikki Haley and Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney all got less than five percent support.

Another poll published by The Hill on Monday found support for Trump even stronger. Three quarters of Republicans backed a 2024 Trump bid for the White House, while 47 percent of all voters wanted him to run again.

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